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Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Sir, I have no objection to a man's drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it. Every man is to judge for himself, according to the effects which he experiences.
– Samuel Johnson
Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
– Samuel Johnson
A cucumber should be well-sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.
– Samuel Johnson
A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.
– Samuel Johnson
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.
– Samuel Johnson
As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.
– Samuel Johnson
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.
– Samuel Johnson
Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.
– Samuel Johnson
Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
– Samuel Johnson
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
– Samuel Johnson
Hope is necessary in every condition.
– Samuel Johnson
If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.
– Samuel Johnson
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
– Samuel Johnson
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
– Samuel Johnson
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
– Samuel Johnson
Of all the griefs that harass the distrest,
Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.
– Samuel Johnson
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
– Samuel Johnson
Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
– Samuel Johnson
The world is not yet exhaused; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.
– Samuel Johnson
There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.
– Samuel Johnson
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
– Samuel Johnson
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
– Samuel Johnson
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
– Samuel Johnson
Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.
– Samuel Johnson
A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.
– Samuel Johnson
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.
– Samuel Johnson
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
– Samuel Johnson
Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.
– Samuel Johnson
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
– Samuel Johnson
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
– Samuel Johnson
Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.
– Samuel Johnson
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.
– Samuel Johnson
Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.
– Samuel Johnson
There is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of Providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution hath withheld from it.
– Samuel Johnson
Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden exchange meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty.
– Samuel Johnson
There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.
– Samuel Johnson
You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.
– Samuel Johnson
You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you.
– Samuel Johnson
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
– Samuel Johnson
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
– Samuel Johnson
We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
– Samuel Johnson
Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.
– Samuel Johnson
To keep your secret is wisdom but to expect others to keep it is folly.
– Samuel Johnson
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
– Samuel Johnson
There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
– Samuel Johnson
There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.
– Samuel Johnson
There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.
– Samuel Johnson
There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.
– Samuel Johnson
There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.
– Samuel Johnson
The world is seldom what it seems to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.
– Samuel Johnson
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
– Samuel Johnson
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
– Samuel Johnson
The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
– Samuel Johnson
The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
– Samuel Johnson
The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
– Samuel Johnson
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
– Samuel Johnson
The future is purchased by the present.
– Samuel Johnson
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love, like being enlivened with champagne.
– Samuel Johnson
Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.
– Samuel Johnson
Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.
– Samuel Johnson
Small debts are like small shot they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon of loud noise, but little danger.
– Samuel Johnson
Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
– Samuel Johnson
Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.
– Samuel Johnson
Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.
– Samuel Johnson
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
– Samuel Johnson
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
– Samuel Johnson
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
– Samuel Johnson
No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.
– Samuel Johnson
No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.
– Samuel Johnson
No man was ever great by imitation.
– Samuel Johnson
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
– Samuel Johnson
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
– Samuel Johnson
Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and... the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.
– Samuel Johnson
Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.
– Samuel Johnson
Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.
– Samuel Johnson
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
– Samuel Johnson
Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
– Samuel Johnson
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.
– Samuel Johnson
Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.
– Samuel Johnson
Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
– Samuel Johnson
Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.
– Samuel Johnson
It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.
– Samuel Johnson
It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.
– Samuel Johnson
It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
– Samuel Johnson
In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
– Samuel Johnson
If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
– Samuel Johnson
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.
– Samuel Johnson
I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.
– Samuel Johnson
I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.
– Samuel Johnson
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.
– Samuel Johnson
He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.
– Samuel Johnson
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
– Samuel Johnson
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
– Samuel Johnson
Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
– Samuel Johnson
Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
– Samuel Johnson
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
– Samuel Johnson
Exercise is labor without weariness.
– Samuel Johnson
Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.
– Samuel Johnson
Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.
– Samuel Johnson
Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
– Samuel Johnson